Sunday

Nov 12, 2017 at 8:00 PMNov 12, 2017 at 8:03 PM

BOSTON - A woman leads the participants to a bench on a darkened stage and softly asks them to take off their shoes and socks and put on a white plastic coat. Under a spotlight, the row of 10 hanging coats glows ghostlike.

Everyone is silent as they look at a card with Arabic writing on the front and English instructions on the back. After a few moments, they walk behind the stage and step onto soft dirt holding 10 headstones.

That is the start of the unusual and moving experience “Gardens Speak,” at The Paramount Theater in Boston through Nov. 19. Created by Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury in 2014, it connects participants to the victims of the Syrian uprising in a particularly intimate way.

“My work has been done in solidarity with Syrians and I hope those who listen with their bodies and minds feel a similar solidarity,” said El Khoury.

She came up with this concept to honor resistors of the Assad regime after she learned that many Syrian families bury their dead in gardens or plots of land near their homes. At funeral homes and cemeteries, the families risked being attacked or forced to sign statements that claimed terrorists, not the government, killed their loved ones.

In the program, El Khoury described the work as “an interactive sound installation,” where “telling the stories of ordinary people, writing their names on tombstones, and singing for them is a necessary act of resistance.”

To hear the story they have selected, participants need to first dig in the dirt to find a black cushion with the name of the “martyr” and cause of death in white print. A voice starts to speak, so softly that it’s necessary for people to place their ear on or close to the cushion containing the audio file, in effect lying on the dirt covering the body.

The 10 victims, killed between 2011 and 2013, were peaceful activists, armed militants, and community organizers, as well as people who were not involved politically. After speaking with friends and family of the dead and reading journals or letters if available, El Kourhy recorded oral histories that tell the story of each individual as he or she would have done so. It is as though the dead are speaking from beyond the grave.

Mustafa Karmani (the man this writer heard) was a recent college graduate newly in love and excited about the promise of freedom in the early days of the Arab Spring. When demonstrations began in Aleppo, the lovers joined them, holding hands as they protested non-violently. At a funeral for another resistor, they escaped bullets that killed 10 mourners. His luck ended during a massive demonstration in Aleppo on Nov. 16, 2012, when a missile exploded and wounded him in the chest, stomach and liver.

Listening to his calm voice, there’s a sense of sadness at the loss of a gentle, hopeful soul and the pain suffered by his wife.

“I left Maha alone to see all the pain and death,” he said in his final words. “I wish I could tell her, ‘Oh Maha, you’re not alone. Mustafa, your Mustafa, will always love you and always be by your side, even after he’s gone.”

When participants come to “Gardens Speak” with someone else, they can describe the story they’ve heard and then hear about someone else. That telling is a kind of bearing witness.

After the individual audio ended, mournful singing broke the stillness. Slowly, participants rose and sat on benches to write a note to the person they met and bury it in the dirt across from the headstone. It was as though the living and dead were in conversation

Confronted with the deaths of thousands of people in Syria, Americans may feel numb or overwhelmed. “Gardens Speaks” allows people to care deeply about the life and death of a single ordinary person.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Gardens Speak

WHEN: Nov. 8-19

WHERE: Paramount Theatre, 559 Washington St., Boston

TICKETS: $45

INFO: 617-824-8400; www.artsemerson.org.

Reach Jody Feinberg at jfeinberg@ledger.com or follow on Twitter @JodyF_Ledger.